Monthly Archives: September 2015

We had a fantastic afternoon in Clover class this afternoon as the children were thinking about our friends in Room 104 at Georgetown Elementary School, Hudsonville, USA. This is Clover class’ international link class and already we have been able to chat to them and make friends with Mrs Woodring’s new class, who are all lovely. They also have a blog at http://sarahwoodring.edublogs.org/ where you can find out all about what our friends in the USA learn every day!

Today, though, we have been thinking about the questions we asked Room 104 and the brilliant answers we received from them about their school, their learning and their daily lives. Here is a slide show of the hard work Clover class produced today. Look out for a photo of our friends in Room 104 too! You can also find some blogged facts from the children on clover.westwoodblogs.org

I’d been looking forward to today as I had the opportunity to spend a whole day teaching with our Year 2/3 children of Clover class. With plenty of learning planned and an enthusiastic class in front of me, we were underway and quickly into phonics before an English lesson centred around a character description of Mr Twit from Roald Dahl’s The Twits. You can see the results of the children’s hard work here: http://clover.westwoodblogs.org/what-do-you-think-of-mr-twit/ Needless to say that there was some super vocabulary and with the children now able to accurately and concisely blog their ideas, it was a great session.

Maths today was focused on Mathletics and the children worked brilliantly to consolidate their learning from yesterday on money. Mathletics is great for engaging children who find some elements of maths tricky. Then this afternoon we took on an international flavour, culminating in a live Google Hangout with our friends from Georgetown Elementary School in Hudsonville, USA.

Something I haven’t done before was to photograph a day in the classroom and you can see what we worked on together in the slide show below, as well as our live hangout with our friends in the US, where the children got to ask questions, share learning and discover each other’s cultures.

Yesterday the whole school took part in a wonderful Maths day. With the opportunity to take part in so many different types of maths activities, the children had an amazing time practising their maths skills. Mathletics was, once again, very well used and it was good to see how board games, word problems and mental arithmetic activities were helping children to develop a real grasp of the key concepts. Well done everyone, another great curriculum day! Watch the action unfold and listen to what the children have learnt…

This afternoon I had the pleasure of teaching Thistle and Clover class. With new skills to learn, both classes enjoyed creating simple algorithims, sequences of exact instructions in order to direct their friends correctly to a specified location. Thistle class were treasure hunters, giving directions using just forwards, backwards, left and right to their friends to find the box of treasure. With clover class we took over the playground, which became outer space for the afternoon. The children worked brilliantly to give clear instructions to arrive at each planet and even the International Space Station! This was computing in a way that the children had not seen before, but they were just brilliant and a joy to teach.

Here they all are in action, with some comments from clover class at the end.

Today has been lots of fun in Clover class as we have had the entry point for our new topic The Circus is Coming to Town. All of the children were asked to come to school in colourful clothes but had no idea that they were in for a wonderful day learning circus skills, playing parachute games and finding out what it is like to be a circus performer. As you can see from our photos, great fun was had by all.